forms of slavery 267
government. In regards to slavery, it is also one of the more documented periods.
Historiography, literature, law and archaeology of the many centuries of the Roman
Empire reveal the functions of slavery, and the ways in which it was molded as an
institution. In both republican and imperial Rome, the borderline between being a
slave and a free person was dynamic in both directions. This meant that enslavement
of free persons was practiced by the state on both war captives and inhabitants of the
Empire who did not comply with Roman politics. Convicted criminals, dissidents,
captives, or imported slaves: all shared the same juridical status. The Roman con-
quests, which were a long historical process, and the constant suppression of political
revolts, ensured a continual supply of slaves within the Empire. This was comple-
mented by importation of “exotic slaves” from Africa, India, and the Caucasus,
castrated boys in particular.
The concept of “penal slavery” made captives and criminals who were sentenced to
death utilizable by the state in public enterprises, mines and games, but did not give
them an exclusive economic role. In the private sector, slaves were particularly useful
to set up economic enterprises precisely because of their unique juridical status, which
made them dependable economically and socially, unlike employees of free status.
Modern research has tended to look at republican Rome as the apogee of the utiliza-
tion of slaves in Italy, especially on the large rural estates (latifundia). In fact, slaves
were a rural labor force alongside free peasants and rural tenants all through the
Roman period in different parts of the Empire. Although rich Roman families kept
large retinues of slaves, slaves had other functions in the Roman household.
Through particular juridical institutions such as the peculium or praepositio, a mas-
ter could establish a slave within the family business in both rural and urban milieus
as a profitable agent, while also exploiting his economic activity for his own benefit.
This made (male) slaves socio-economically unique, comparable, if anything, to
un-emancipated adult sons. It also made the economic expansion of the family unit
dependent on the incorporation of slaves as managers. Manumission acted as a means
of institutionalizing this social dependency to the benefit of both slave and master.
The manumitted male slave, just like an emancipated son, inherited his master’s name,
family linage and political position, and could well build a career for himself as an
entrepreneur. This did not imply that slaves were treated as beloved children, far from
it. Roman society defined the master–slave relationship in a framework of total
dependency, a product of the potestas of the paterfamilias, the unlimited power of the
father over the lives of his family members. The slaves’ loyalty to their masters was
taken for granted, and although not acceptable for testimony in court (slaves having
no juridical personality) torturing of them was a regular procedure.
Cases of resistance were a reaction to the cruelty inflicted on slaves, especially on slaves
owned by the state, as attested in the three “Servile Wars,” as they are named in Roman
sources, in Italy (135–132 bce, 104–100 bce, 73–71 bce), the last one led by Spartacus.
Any form of resistance, in both public and private sectors, ended with death for the slaves
involved. The demarcation between slave and free person was a well-defined borderline
that divided society into two groups with distinct “civil statuses” (“civil” in the sense of
their different juridical status—one group subjugated to the law, the other to their own-
ers). But, the fact that slaves arrived from different parts of the Mediterranean, and could
be both inhabitants of the Empire and foreigners according to political and commercial
circumstances, made the status of a free person dynamic in both ways.